SMS (or texting as it is commonly known) would be the bane of many a parent who has got their kids a cell phone. You can't turn left or right at a mall these days and not find a group of youngsters sitting and texting. And when people at the cinema SMS sitting right next to me, it gets my blood boiling. Earlier, text messages used to be sent when one couldn't call for some reason or the other. But that changed with the fall in SMS rates and many packages coming with a fixed number of SMSes free with the connection. For many it became the primary function of having a cell phone. Colleges and schools struggled to keep the students from constantly texting with their phones hidden under their benches. So much so that cell phones had to be banned in several educational institutions.
But SMS provides an easy way out from having to talk with someone and explain something. Imagine - you won't be able to make it for a friend's birthday bash because you want to do something else then. But calling him up and giving an excuse is really hard as we all know. Instead, we just text saying "Car brk dwn. Cant make it. Srry. :-(". That way we avoid having to speak with him directly. It provides a comfortable buffer that you can use to measure your words. In a way it is an invisible wall that we hide behind. Any reply to his message would be carefully thought out.
That aspect of SMS eliminates the spontaneity in communication that makes human interaction so unique. While I still prefer to talk over the phone (not that I have the money to do so all the time), I can firmly say that the vast majority would disagree with me.
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